12/02/2016

There is the smell of soy and earth, incense and mossy fingers wrapped between concrete. There are sidewalk gardens tended with delicate hands, a whispered push of broom against brick. The flutter of an open door resisting the wind.

I used to live here.

I used to know these smells and sounds, as I navigated this new place alone, far from the embrace of home. I let these smells and sounds hold me up when my 19 year old worry pulled me to the ground. Let them hold me up when the panic attacks came. When the rise of anxiety consumed my body like a wave, drowning my eyes with the salty burn of fear.

And I wondered if 25 years later the storm would still be there, waiting for me. Like a page left unturned in a story never finished.

I wondered if the door once closed would open again.

I can’t remember his name. But I remember his eyes.

Swollen as the rain ran down the side of the window in the train station. His eyes, held up inside a map of wrinkles that would take me places his heart couldn’t forget.

He leaned over his cane and reached for his wife’s hand. His eyes tipped as he came close and whispered.

My best friend lives in America.

He balanced on the soft, wooden handle as his body swayed between words.

We’ve been writing to each other every day for the past 40 years.

The sky stilled, clouds perched atop each word.

Every day.

For the past 40 years.

And I thought of each word, stroked under lamplight. Pressed between warm fingers. Stories from a day, a week, a moment remembered and set free. A tiny seed buried inside the ground nurturing the soil with its kindness, keeping his heart alive.

Sometimes kindness is a closed door. A place we forgot to look.

A vulnerability worth opening. And somewhere behind that closed door is a heart waiting to be seen. A heart waiting for the swell to soften and unfold, the salty eyes of hope waiting for its return.

Will you see me?

Will you see it all?

Kindness is a closed eye offering.

A door between vulnerability and courage waiting for us to step through.

A place of red skin rawness, shy of the open hand receipt.

A story told over and over again until it’s written behind our eyes, until it becomes the filter by which we see the world in front of us.

I see you.

I see.

All of you.

Turn the knob.

And sometimes I have to listen real hard. Drown out the beating of my own heart and step through the door knowing it may be too heavy to hold alone.

Because these doors have locks and there are keys gone missing for a lifetime.

Sometimes more.

And I thought there would always be time.

Time to find my way between the doors again.

Time to find my way between vulnerability and courage.

Find my way to this place where kindness holds you in its warmth.

So I hold on. I let go.

I step through and over and above.

What happens to a heart held inside the eyes of kindness?

And sometimes there is just a blank page.

The invisible ink hiding what needs to be seen.

And all we can do is rub our fingers across the page and feel for the place where the pen found the words, where it left its hard pressed story there for us to feel.

And it is there, in the winds rhythmic hymn.

The stream of incense pointing its smoky fingers towards the sky.

Questions answered with one gentle push.

Kindness finds you when the door is open.

Listen for its soft voice, whispering.

We arrived just as the rain began to fall.

Fog covered the mountains and slunk between the fields.

We stared down at the map thick with Japanese letters, lost in a sea of unknowns. A trickle of fear knocked as my heart raced.

She found us.

Her head tilted with concern.

Can I help you?

Can I help you find your way?

And it was her kindness, perched high above us with no words to translate.

Her kindness, unnamed, held us there.

Yes.

Please.

Don’t let go.

And her eyes. And the way she smiled just then. Like the morning sun just as it makes its way over the horizon for the first time.

Her finger found a blue line on the map caught between the crease.

This one.

This one will take you home.

Yes.

Please

Don’t let go.

There is no mark for love. Just as there is no mark for fear.

Just the invitation pushed under the door.

Waiting for you to open it.

And there is the temptation to push it back under the door. To give it back to the shadow that hides it.

Because fear takes residence.

Closes doors and throws locks into deep seas of shame.

Fear whispers,

Don’t trust.

Kindness is not real.

But it is kindness that frees us from hesitation.

Frees us from the roundabout wither of trust.

Heals us from the other side.

From the place where the door has stayed closed for too long.

And how many times have I held kindness at a distance, far enough away to watch it, observe it without ever fully knowing it.

And how many ways do these acts of kindness, these unseen swirls of the heart go unnoticed, unspoken. Never added to the horizon of worry and faltering trust.

Can I help you?

Yes.

Please.

Don't let go.

This one will take you home.

Because kindness is never lost. It waits on the wind.

Brought home by the lift of tears inside your eyes.

Kindness whispers,

There is nothing to fear.

Step through the door.

And don’t look back.

My swelling heart sees your swelling heart.

There is a voice behind the door.

And the sound of feet.

An invitation slid between shadows, pushed underneath by the girl I used to be. And the hand on the other side, still touching the wood, slowly finding the veins of time, the open knots of change, still wounded.

08/19/2016

A year since we bought a house and began the process of remodeling it. A year since opening it up and letting the walls come down around us.

A year since I packed up my studio, my paper and scissor heart, inside walls of cardboard and said goodbye as we boxed up the life we once knew.

It's been a year.

And more.

Since I began writing words in the midst of sawdust and sand. Words that would turn into a story I never knew existed until I found the space to listen. Words that would write windows inside our walls.

And there, inside these days of want and worry, structure torn from the ground and brought back to life.

A year of listening.

It was July when we left the remainder of a life unpacked in boxes to find the clear waters of a summer unexplored.

We found our quiet place. Our Minnesota place.

The sweet cabin nestled between pines, smeared with light. The hue of morning fog softening the hard outlines of change.

There was the yawn of his open hand finding mine. The sun, dappled across his cheek like the memory of a paintbrush spun. The path we once walked together, narrower now. Filled with a new kind of growth, a swing of fern over sand.

The grass was taller. Stones, smoothed by lake’s touch. Steps made new by a season refreshed.

And his words, a lyric strummed inside string pulled too tight.

“I don’t remember this part, mama.”

His eyes, round with wonder.

“It feels new.”

And all of the places we allowed the dent of time to keep us from opening the doors of our hearts wider to this bend of light.

“It is new, sweet boy.”

“It’s all new.”

Sometimes we have to start over.

Take the roof off and feel the sky. Make the windows bigger to let more light in. Feel the spread of an early morning sunrise warm our naked feet.

Sometimes we have to take the walls down.

Let them rest awhile on the ground. Feel the earth after years of holding the roof up over our heads. The strain of muscles gripped too tight.

Sometimes we have to let go so we can make something new.

There are the ghostly reminders of a life once lived.

The bend of wire unwrapped from a bag of bread. Curled and abandoned under a door, unhinged. The lost cap from a broken jar. The milk jug’s pull of plastic unraveled over loose gravel. Remnants of a moving truck pressed deep inside the soiled ground.

And the battered shell of time worn by a sea of impatience, written and dissolved under the weight of moving tides.

“Step over the dead branches, sweet boy.”

Look up at the handsome sky.

Open your heart and your eyes will see.

There were places where the boards, the shingles and framework needed to be torn down. The rusty nails that no longer held things together, replaced with new words.

The dark places behind the drywall. Places where the storm never settled. Where the rain and charge of lightning left moisture to spread and mold. Places left too long without care.

Places that needed to be dug out and relearned.

And sometimes it feels easiest to write the hard parts. Like a loom spun over and over again, needled over time. The arguments, the torn hours of separation, the pulled crease of adolescence woken too soon.

And I used to make myself wrong for staying too long in these moments, hovering over the rough edges, touching the wound. But now, I wonder if it is these places touched by the storm that actually save us. Keep us from hanging onto the branch too long, allowing the current its power to move us along.

“Be careful here, mama. The path is slippery.”

And there’s the time in between, left homeless, when the walls are still going up. exposed to the wind and the dark night skies when worry caresses sleep with shaky fingers.

When the structure has yet to be born. When there are just words floating between the leaves waiting for a room of their own. Windows wide without the protective sheen of glass.

There were times when I wondered if the story was nothing more than the wind whistling between the rafters, taunting my wayward heart. Words rubbing up against each other, sheets of winds pushing each cloud farther across the sky.

But I showed up with hammer in hand and found new words inside the framework bubbling up from inside the new found light.

And I listened to the breaking limbs above us.

Keep going. Don’t stop. A home takes time.

A story is born to a listening heart.

And the art supplies hushed inside boxes whispered,

“You’ll find us again when you’re ready. When you new home desires color.”

And the story whispered,

“Color me something beautiful.”

"Color me something brave."

And sometimes finding our true selves can feel like pulling a coat over our shoulders only to find it no longer fits. The sleeves pulled up above the wrist. The buttons torn from a careless tug.

“I can’t remember the way it used to look, mama.”

I watched his feet find the mossy slips and rocky edge dangling into the red, fevered sky.

“It was beautiful, sweet boy.”

“It was always beautiful.”

And the hours of wait when nothing seemed to get done. When the leaves shook and danced over open walls and sinking floors. The soft whisper of dust settled. The filament of words lost and found between fold of insulation.

This house would stand taller. Stronger. Windows open, letting the rain fall over the panes of cracked glass, shattered.

Take me back to the story I remember.

To the path once walked with eyes closed shut.

And how many whispers felt the bend of an ear inside these walls. Inside these pages torn. The notebook pushed inside pockets. Pen wrapped inside gloved hands.

We are writing our way back home again. Carving our names inside the hard oak floor of goodbye.

Sanding away the fear.

There is a story being built inside of us. Outside of us, around us and through us.

I can hear it.

The sound the floor made when the hammer met the nail. A gentle quake of bend and release inside wood narrowly touched for years.

The splinters of growth and urgency. Pages born from the mourning. Born from the crush of words sawn and stacked in corners waiting to be made smooth, sanded and primed.

The arch rising and falling inside a pile of rusty nails, pulled from a crushed board.

A book can look lovely with its cover closed, all of the bones, the words, the story sealed and held between fearful hands.

And sometimes it takes courage to turn the page even when the story is crumbling, when your eyes burn with sorrow, when the characters choose against us.

But if you’re quiet enough, you can hear the story between the breaking glass. The pounding nails charting their course across wobbly boards.

“We found it, mama. The end. The end of the path.”

There’s another story. I can see it pressed against the soft evening horizon. Its silhouette spread out, reaching for my hand. The voice still soft. Its words still a gentle nudge. A nod. A smile. Damp eyes asking for me to follow.

08/31/2015

The bedrooms smell like mothballs and it takes exactly 289 steps to reach the lake’s mossy shore. There’s a smudge where he pressed his hand against the glass to count the sleeping deer, quiet under the peeling bark of the tallest hickory.

Our hands are muddier. There is dirt under our nails and nightly scrubs. Our shoes have permanent rings of dark soil around their rubber soles, shoelaces embalmed in dried seaweed. I found a Styrofoam box of worms in the refrigerator, his muddy fingerprints wrapped around the lid.

The boys started school. There was Driver’s Ed and early morning arguments. Now there is soccer. We practice driving and I hold onto my seatbelt with both hands. The days of open page schedules have since passed. Their small eyes are bigger, wider. There is more searching, more stretching, more straying from my open hand and I thought maybe they had outgrown the joy of an afternoon wander.

And I can’t tell if time is moving faster or if I am moving slower. But it feels better. This presence. This awareness. This soiled knee, forest light mess is more beautiful than I remembered.

The apple tree is crooked. He hangs between the branches, holding tight to the place where a limb broke off and grew back.

Why don’t you take pictures anymore, mama? I miss you taking the pictures.

You do?

I do.

Me too.

There’s a video of him looking back at me. He was four and the coneflowers had grown taller than his small head. The video has no sound but I can hear his words through his waiting eyes.

I have places to take you, mama. Secret places.

Places where monsters lurk beneath the murky sea and dragon’s eyes rise between the leaves. And he ran past the trees until they weren’t trees at all, just the blur of a Sunday afternoon gone by too fast.

The previous owner said there is an asparagus patch that has been here for over 30 years. It still has the thin remnants of asparagus reaching for the sky and I wonder if they miss her hands.

Some of the flowers have begun to wither and I wonder if they forgot the way it felt to be in full bloom, if they miss it or if their dying leaves are a way to honor where they’ve been. The amount of time they spent parched inside the sun’s afternoon light, waiting for their thirst to be quenched.

We’re just growing, mama. Like the flowers and the trees.

There is the flower’s sweet invitation to take solace in her bloom. No concern over how her petals may fall, if there is a tear or the bitten remains of hunger. She stands alive in her own imperfection, more beautiful than before.

It can't grow again unless it dies first.

There is something new here, something rising from the end. Something caught and held, just for a moment. Made to be released. Something there all along, under the rain tossed shore, moving in and out between the soft underwater green, turning the water with its tail, the luminous glow of new skin receiving the light.

And there are demons, imagined and real, quiet and called upon, rising where we opened the sky and set them free. Twenty years brings softness to the eyes. And that story, the folded poem we carried between denim and skin left traces of ink we thought would mark our flesh forever. But that’s the thing about story and words and holding onto each syllable like it’s the air that is saving us from the underwater shore.

There is the moment you choose to lay them down, extinguish all the burning embers once and for all, never looking back even at the smoke still rising between the trees.

Because the rain will come if you let it.

There is a drawing of a new studio somewhere with lines erased and reimagined. My hands paint pictures with words, chapters and chapters of words. And there is something magical about writing without an end, letting a story unfold like an open mouth yawn finding rest.

And there are things close to my heart, not ready to share. And it feels like a whisper not yet fully a voice. So I am keeping it close hoping someday it will be strong enough to sing.

You gotta be quiet, mama or you’ll scare the fish.

Quiet gives voice to a heart with no pen.

And there is something honoring about being present with creation instead of documenting it. This quiet feels like standing still with your hands wide open letting the world find the creases between your fingers until you’re ready to close them again.

Can we stay a while longer, mama?

Sometimes love can look like silence. And voice can feel like rain.

There is a spin, some kind of centrifugal force, keeping us from entering this middle. This quiet, eye of the storm place, where the winds strength, its gust, carry our worries inside tornado swirl. And it's this same gust protecting us, holding us close to its center.

Because some change is fast like a tree torn from the ground, the windswept years, minutes, hours it took for those roots to grow deep enough to hold it all up, the branches and leaves, all reaching for the sky.

Other change is enduring, the unseen coil of memory and time, seeds thrown into the sky, searching for a place to land.

Sometimes you have to leave home to find home is you.

I held his pole when his line tangled. We drifted a little longer and dropped anchor after the sky turned orange. We reached into the water and felt the sunset wrap itself around our skin.

It feels softer now, mama.

And it looked like the water was rising up to meet the clouds with the tips of her waves. That maybe the storm was just the pull of the shore taking us home.

You gotta be patient, mama. It’ll come.

Just keep putting the line in the water.

Something will bite.

And I realize it's his voice keeping the sky blue just long enough to remember her color, trace the clouds so we might release them inside our hearts when the day swells gray and black.

Did you feel his skin, mama? The way the scales hold each other up?

There’s a smudge on the glass where your fingers pressed hello,

where you turned the last of the midnight rain into a heart that stretched into the sky.

10/21/2014

He walked in front of me and twirled inside the revolving door, going around two extra times before I made my way inside the hospital lobby. He touched the carved wooden statue of Mary with his fingers and looked up at me when he reached her face, waiting for permission to touch her eyes.

“I don’t want to go in,” he whispered.

“I want to remember him in the sunshine, mama. Like the day in the picture. The one with him picking strawberries in his overalls.”

He found a seat in the family waiting room and tucked his feet under a chair staring at the unguarded bowl of butterscotch discs.

“I’ll be right down the hallway, sweet boy.”

My eyes met his at the bowl of candy and he smiled.

I used to think I had to wait for something to make sense, wait for a reason, a way to calculate and rationalize and step like life held ticking clocks with hands that could start and stop with each pause.

I held his hand. I found the time laced inside his 94 year old hands, all thin and transparent like daylight, the minutes and hours resting inside a hollow cup between wait and remember. And I will never forget the warmth of the room. The way the light found its way through the curtains, the way his beauty found its way into the sky.

“How long will it take before grandpa can fly?”

His voice caught inside his hands as he studied the open book on his lap, chin propped up on one knee.

“I don’t know, sweetie.”

When my grandmother had Alzheimer’s, my grandpa would go to the nursing home and visit her every day from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night. He held her hand even when she pulled it back. I remember the day her floor flooded and she was left in her room alone, slippers dangling from her wet feet. The way his words calmed her like a satin ribbon strung around her heart in need of a gentle pull.

And there were all the finches in the big cage near the entrance. I would always stop and watch them sleep inside their crisscross nests. Their small wings tucked gently at their sides.

Sometimes they would spread their wings only to be stopped by the wire walls. And I remember wondering if they ever just gave up, if they knew somewhere deep inside that they were trapped or if they held onto some kind of a dream that if the door was left open long enough, maybe they would find her room and help her to remember.

“I think he’s growing his wings, mama.”

There was the light that collected between his forehead and the glass, his small silhouette etched inside the rearview mirror. And the gray sky felt like ash falling from something burned long ago.

“I think you’re right.”

I have all of these pictures of the sky, collections of moments blurred and then gone. The clouds, the wind's brushed path, celestial maps running off the edge of the paper. And there is no place to land, just the open sky shining more brightly than I can ever remember.

He had a bird feeder outside his window and my mom would fill it whenever it was empty. Sometimes the seed would spill from the mouth of the bag and land on the ground beneath the feeders. And in the summer, the seed that didn’t get eaten by the mourning doves would start to grow like a grassy pasture rising to meet the bird’s quiet wings.

The bird feeders are quiet now. I wonder if they miss him.

“He was General MacArthur’s cook. Did you know that?”

I whisper to the boy pressed against the backseat window.

“He came home from the war and told his daddy he wanted to be a baker. He wanted to buy the local bakery but his daddy said no. His daddy said he had to be a farmer just like his brothers.”

“What happened to his dream?”

“It lived in his heart.”

“Maybe he’s baking cakes for all of the angels in heaven now. Decorating their wings with sprinkles and those litte candy hearts we find in the baking aisle.”

“Maybe some dreams are made to live in our heart. Maybe they don’t know how to get out. I hope I can be the one to open the door for you, sweet boy.”

“Mama?”

“Yes, love.”

“Have you opened your door?”

“I’m trying.”

“Maybe I can sprinkle your wings with hearts.”

“I would like that.”

The house is quiet now except for the sound of my mom rustling through the open boxes. Cardboard lids opening and closing, photos stacked. Paused.

And I can hear him between each lift and fold.

“Hey! Hey!” His bright eyes lifted like a moon pushed through the clouds.

The pictures of all the grandkids hanging from pushpins above the brown plaid sofa where Dolly slept tight in a ball of brown fur and tucked tail. The Christmas card from 6 years ago, the one with the boys dressed up as the three kings and the place where the envelope tore Nik’s crown.

I will leave nothing wasted, not a spark of engine fire to burn. And all the ways we turn our dreams into shadows, dependent on the sway of the trees. When hope is the fabric that feels thin between my fingers, I will see him rise from his chair, clutching his metal walker and whisper,

“Just try.”

Sometimes we go to the beach. We spread our arms out and we race against the wind. I look at him beside me, his small body pushed up against the rising unseen, a set of invisible hands holding him in place.

There is no force in this trust, this ragged edge line of time that wraps like a bandage around our worst days. These funerals and sunsets and the sky that holds it all.

07/21/2014

There is a sign in the yard that swings when the wind blows. We stood on the front porch and watched the clouds gather over the bent trees. I remembered the night the tornado hit several miles over the train tracks. He was close to eight months old, new teeth breaking through his tender gums. I rocked him back and forth inside my basket arms listening to the wind rise through the open window.

We ran down the stairs in the dark and he slept in my arms as we crouched on the basement floor, his eyes moving back and forth in tick tock dream. And I remember praying, writing words inside these walls, hoping that somehow they would hold us together.

The sky was achy and blue and he slid his hand inside mine.

“Are you sad, mama?”

He found a puddle and kissed it with the tip of his toe.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

His eyes lit from somewhere deep within, like a lighthouse making a turn towards the sea.

“Let’s go for an explore the way we used to.”

There is the path you used to run. All of the voices hidden between blades of grass, the laughter caught in each bend of leaf. A rustling beneath that shakes the seed from the tall grass still swaying.

And I thought of all the places we left footprints.

Where the grass got stuck between our toes and I thought about the house alone, quiet without the voices in hallways, wet mittens on floors.

The way leaves, loose from the hold of a tree can look like rain in the wind’s breath, a storm of hearts flying. A flower longing for hands to grasp its broken stem, to mend it with fingers laced.

You’ve grown on the shoulders of these days, lifted from yearbooks, dog eared diaries pressed between palms, hands made soft with time.

Something is being rewritten, still quiet and small, like sunshine before the rise just before it meets the horizon. This poem left out in the rain, words once pressed hard with imprint, now smeared by touch.

He is shy and his eyes are heavy. And I see the back of his head more, the sweeping curls of a boy who used to bring me frogs and toads and broken blue eggs pieced back together.

And I miss him already even though he’s still here.

High school doors will soon swallow him.

He walks with hands in pockets, protecting the contents from another day, the peripheral glance back to something forgotten, lingering somewhere behind his eyes.

Handles broken off in the places where I used to hold on.

His slippery heart moving in and out, like the sun’s woody pattern on a summer’s path. This intermittent hello lost, this blink between man and boy.

It was the way he carried himself, shoulders bent like a broken gate unhinged. His hair soaked in an elder fog.

And maybe I will always remember this day as that time, that last time he let me see inside his window eyes before the curtains were drawn.

Or maybe I will remember the way these same eyes grew forests with their light.

“Can I hold your hand?”

Can I feel all of the words still hanging in your heart like flowers left to dry.

Sometimes we need to talk even when there is nothing to say.

This thunder behind a cloud, brimming with strength and voice. Notes drawn on a page, the music never played, hummed over the cattails swaying.

And we’ll open a window, and listen for a far away train going somewhere, the soft horn of arrival and departure. Follow me. Anywhere. Somewhere. And the trail of smoke curling around cities, the places you’ll go.

This story has new pages where my words have been erased and rewritten in the quiet places between the lines. Where my words have grown smaller, pages still blank with life.

Open the skies.

These words feel like falling rain.

Skin raw under these first new drops. Soaking into the cracked walls of thinning grass and the pale remnants of summer.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

The way a story can be heard crying for release under a stack of heavy books.

The stone paper, soaking up each turned corner cursive stroke. To know it’s still there, the voice behind the eyes, the rumbling under the forest bark, the roots shaking with power and strength, waiting to be released.

I can hear the words spoken somewhere between flannel pajama bottoms and loose teeth under pillows, all the places where the roots have been pulled from the ground.

And the words follow us like a kite dragged over the dusty ground, waiting for the wind lift it again.

“Do you remember the bird?”

The one that found it’s way in through an open door. The way it flew around for hours, hovering above the couch, landing on tables and crashing into windows, trying to find its way out, until finally, he landed on the rough stone fireplace. His small chest moving up and down, his tiny heart beating so fast. And we tried to move him, tried to get him to crawl inside a small bucket so we could set him free. But he wouldn’t move. His tiny toes curled around the brown stone, holding on. It died, holding on. And the next morning, we buried him in the yard. You cried. You held his small wings in your hand and you cried.

“He wouldn’t let go, mama. He wouldn’t let go.”

Sometimes you have to let things go in order to be free.

And this is what it will feel like.

Like the wind under a broken leaf, set free.

Like a door rising from the dirt ground, loosened.

You are my words. Each deep breath pulled close to my ear. Your cry caught in the gentle twirl of a black cat’s tail and her quiet meow with eyes asking.

“Can we play?”

The house is empty.

I thought we’d have more time.

All of the words, still silent, waiting behind walls crumbling.

There is a passage, an underground tunnel of time, unseen, like a man quietly holding his suitcase walking towards the tunnel’s open end, a halo's light welcome.

There is the surface in hand, the belongings of a life collected and put down, only to be watched from a distance, this sail being lifted and pray for calm seas.

Sometimes all we can do is try. And I have to be reminded of how this thing works. This salty tear, feet bathed in dirt, thing.

“Just try.”

Because, you can’t hold on.

Grace comes in the early morning hours before the light has a chance to grow hard. These whispers between leaves, caught between steps, forgiveness rising on the wings of feathers stretched, the mourning dove’s last cry.

This fragile tree place where the slightest shift in wind can tear at a newly forming leaf, where I pray the roots were made strong enough for these winds of change, this heartache grown from stretch, the vine wrapped and pulled, stretching towards the light where a small seed blooms.

And the deep breath of the thirsty paper quenched by a liquid brush. Take me somewhere. Anywhere.

These words spoken for the first time, the shell cracked, pieces falling to the floor in puddle of ink and spoken watercolor words. Stroke upon stroke, until something luminous and holy shines through.

03/20/2014

His shirt had a long stream of mud down his back, the perforated line of a fast moving bike through after school puddles. We found his lost glove in the yard, wet all the way through, bird seed collected inside the thumb.

And the sound of a bike thrown to the ground, small feet on soaked pavement, the squeak and slide of wet rubber on ceramic tile. The tender place between winter and spring, too warm for gloves, hands red from handlebar hold.

The dog stood panting at the screen door, front legs shifting, the tap dance clap of feet against floor.

We drove to his favorite spot.

The air was warm and his boots slid just below the cuff of his jeans.

He placed his hand in mine. First, for balance, the teeter totter rock between left foot, then right. His fingers soft, gently cupped around his deep constellation palms, a universe tucked quietly inside his grip.

And the sky pulled from a forgotten palette, the soft milky orange of melting sherbet across an open mouth. He pulled at my wrist as he climbed up and over. Up and over. The melting mounds of a winter etched deep in our skin.

The water pooled in the carved out places, sand pulled in like a hurricane’s eye, resting. And the sky breathed a heavy relief, the lake swallowing mouthfuls of winter’s end.

Waves caught in frozen memories of the time the water swirled and the sky broke open, when the snow fell like tossed confetti and we huddled beneath blankets, toes wrapped in socks warm from the dryer.

He ran ahead. My hand still open from the place where our world's once met.

And the sky lowered her silky veil, the blink of sunlight, of summer’s open sail. The hard places softened. An icy sheen kissed by the golden end of winter’s tight hold.

His small hands explored the thinning ice as he watched the memory of winter gently float away. He dug deep beneath the snow, pulling forgotten days between the ice. Dark rubbed stones, flooded driftwood, a pinecone shed of its protective layers. The sound the ice made when it cracked, letting the water underneath escape its history.

Joy lives in the open hands, in the light caught between fingers spread.

These are the cavernous days. The waterlogged days. And sometimes it’s enough to just move towards the light.

And he climbed, arms swinging in pendulum ticks.

The treeline ache for stretch and reach, this expansion, these hollow spaces inside filled up again.

So we quietly walked over the end, letting the beginning break open under our feet. The day wide from a winter’s long exhale.

Leave these hands empty, ravished winter sky.

His hand slipped in and out of mine.

Where are your treasures, sweet boy?

The sky hushed and widened, turning her shoulders toward the sun, casting shadows over his upturned eyes.

And his small hands rolled rocks between his fingers, a broken pinecone spun inside his muddy palm, then dropped to the thawed ground beneath us.

There is the impulse to make something, to bring it to life, to see its little heart beat for the first time. You are the maker of things, the cutters, the knitters, the bakers, the spreaders, the cleaners, the healers, the soothers, the wishers.

The dreamers.

You are an Artist mama.

And all of the dreams you’ve dragged around like muddy footprints on hardwood floors, written word by lamplight, folded laundry plotlines, the nursing eyes closed over paint still wet.

Move quick, Artist mama, your heart is beating fast, ball of yarn hopes caught on running feet, sometimes lonely, hands caught between yarn and needle, eyes torn between a mounting pile of uniforms turned inside out and the deep forest path leading you into the place of daydream.

And the sketch, the one with the coffee ring corners, will turn into written word, painted hills, stitched castles, the framed black and white escape back into his small eyes.

Lift the sail, mama.

And this lake, with her waters frozen in time. I wonder if she still feels her power underneath, stirring. Waiting for the day the sun will melt her into soft puddles of carved diamond light.

Because sometimes it means standing at the edge, Artist mama, peering over gates still closed, painting doors open, stitching paths through the solid ground.

Camera tucked inside diaper bags, plastic baggy lens caps. And the eyes that catch the morning light silhouette, running for open doors while the angels rest their wings.

Because there is no catching up, no slowing down, just the kaleidoscope swirl of day and night, sweet smiles stretched like stars pulled from the sky, changing with each turn of the handle.

And some days it will feel like spilled paint, the cardboard box dinners and waitlisted creations.

You, Artist mama, finding beauty in the soiled war torn moments of raising little people, sketching laughter over broken glass fear, seeing the world in its simplest and most deep form, the art hung inside museum wall hearts.

Press on.

And there are the eyes that may never see the rich pigment of love spread over a diagonal cut cantaloupe or the sweet scallop crust or the words you breathe onto computer screens read only by you.

And it is this mother inside you, crafting, creating a world more beautiful than before. A place you can set your children free, running between the turned pot perennials and your blueberry inked hands.

And you will never be defined by approval, but by the wonder, the awe of small eyes turned up, as they find your Artist mama heart. Alive in them.

And sometimes something lives inside you so long, you forgot to let go.

And the pull, the sometimes haunting dreams blooming late into the night as you sweep away a risen nightmare, legs curled around tiny toes, deep breath sleep, sweet dreams rising like clouds against the nursery blue ceiling, a color cataloged in the steep cliff files of ideas and pallets hanging inside your heart.

Sleep.

Rest, Artist mama.

There is time.

And the pen on paper, collecting the last dew drops of a written storm. Author. Writer. Singer. Riser. I send you my love. Press on. Collect. Forge. Stir. Piece together your life, these characters, your breath.

The stroke of paint between fallen spoons, the coffee deemed warm enough.

The lines read and memorized, the string of song softly pulled behind shower curtains, each note a sail pulling your vessel heart through the clear sea of possibility.

Time.

And the ball of yarn tossed behind sofas, caught on wee toes, the sewing machine stammer between arguments fallen from the edge of niceties, petals pressed by the sweet toes of curiosity. The pull of thread, the scraps saved in boxes and tubs and bowls once measured. The paint smeared, the skin caught under brush, washed, tainted, stained with attempt.

Don’t give up.

And the gray cloud of guilt for a door closed too long, savoring each new stitch, new word, new color weaved, landscape spread across blue skies, clay pressed into vessels that will hold petals cupped in small hands.

Stay. Just one more minute, Artist mama. Just one.

Chest heaving. Milk rushing.

Stay.

Into the place broken open, every part of yourself cracked, where the fear shakes in the wake of a path built from hope filled leaps.

In the broken open, where you pour yourself out, leaving bits of yourself, clutched in confetti hold, thrown in each moment of unconditional love.

And the sunset still, the cilantro cut, carrots shaved and neatly stacked, the icing smoothed over a canvas of flour made fine. The smiling faces with cheeks of plum purred to perfection.

There is the dream.

The one not just for you, but for the eyes that watch your hands turn whipped cream into clouds, painting blue skies around their sadness, silver moons shining light into dark corner nightmares.

You are mothers.

Full time dreamers, part time eyelash blowers, tying each wish to the eyes of your children, open, staring back into these mother hearts.

And I thought I didn’t know. I thought I’d never find the answer. This thing of how to be an artist, a map maker to uncharted lands and still be their mama.

And then I found his eyes looking up at me, staring back into midnight’s deep lake.

Will you draw me a picture?

The one with me fighting the monster?

The one with the magical sword.

Can you draw it mama?

I will paint you the world.

And there in your mama arms, heavy with exhaustion, lit with some kind of forever love, a canvas, covered in small fingers pressed and pulled, hands deep in spring’s moppy soil, small boots pushed against doors left ajar.

01/15/2014

His eyes lifted into the milky glow of the frosted window as he pulled on the broken strap hanging from his backpack.

It has nowhere to go.

The stoplight sank and weaved against the gentle wind, its red eye winking between bends. And the car filled with the kind of quiet that happens only after a morning rush.

It just follows the wind.

His small voice left cracks in the glass.

Sometimes it moves straight down, and sometimes it stays awhile, just floating, wandering a bit.

The green light pulled us forward.

There is this quiet space without words, just wind. Where there is no hanging on, just flight. Without outcome, just grace.

Do you remember the bird?

The one caught in the garage between the beach chairs and the cans of paint? Its small chest pulling for breath, the deep reach of want, the carnal thunder of a race still running.

And I thought about the pull, the tug to be right, to be made well, to be made known.

And I thought about the wings that flap so hard, trying. Trying.

Trying to make the wind.

The snowflakes kept falling, straight, then bent, coming to the ground shaken and soft. And the gentle landing, blessed by the wind, by the snowflakes already arrived, blanketing the hard ground below.